If you are contributing to the economy and enjoying a quiet meal, you will be removed and perhaps arrested. If you are passed out in the street in a pool of your own vomit, surrounded by your dirty needles and used condoms, you will be protected.

WTF?

Starting immediately, uniformed and plainclothes police will routinely patrol restaurants to kick out known criminals.

The Restaurant Watch program is similar to the bar patrols police already do to weed out undesirables, Supt. Warren Lemcke said.

“It is to send a clear message to people involved in organized crime and gang activity they are no longer welcome,” said Lemcke.

Sounds good on paper, I suppose, but when Vancouver announced this yesterday, the whole thing becomes a farce.

The complaint filed against the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association and Civil City commissioner Geoff Plant claims the program, established in May, 2000, to patrol the downtown area and address “street disorder,” further marginalizes a population that already struggles with poverty, addiction and disabilities.

The complaint asserts that by telling people sleeping or loitering on the street to “move along,” and by identifying and monitoring “undesirable” people, the security guards acting as downtown ambassadors impair the dignity of aboriginal people and people with disabilities who comprise a disproportionate number of the city’s homeless and addicts, and deny them equal access to public space.

So now some thug gets tossed from a restaurant (providing he goes in at all, given the signage) and that restaurant burns down under mysterious circumstances a few nights later. No skin off the thug, who had nothing more than a brief moment of embarrassment to deal with, while the poor restaurant owner loses his livelihood. Nice.

And while Fat Tony is figuring out where to get his next dose of Marinara, people shopping or pushing strollers have to contend with streets covered in filth, drunken harassment, puddles of biohazard and much more. All in time for the world to watch during the 2010 Olympics. Not to mention that those on the streets are once more left on the streets, instead of being put in rehab or social housing (which these poverty pimps are forever going on about, just to keep themselves in a job. no good for them to be on the streets!). And Fat Tony gets a little bit richer keeping the indigent hooked on his crack.

Excellent planning, folks.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Crime, Human Rights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.